


Stronger than Fate

by ixieko



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-21 10:10:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3688278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ixieko/pseuds/ixieko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What would happen if Gast and Ifalna took Sephiroth with themselves when they escaped from Shin-Ra and raised him as their own? What would happen when he discovers his true heritage? How much of his personality was the result of his upbringing? Will he be able to overcome his intended fate as a destroyer of the world?</p>
<p>A tale of family, friendship and adventures, features Sephiroth and Aerith as brother and sister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue. Runaways

The dawn is stormy and dark. Theo stops at the top of the steep stone path leading down the cliff to the pier, and contemplates returning back to his house, to warm fireplace and cold beer, instead of going out in such weather.  
Mother-in-law's barn won't fall to pieces if he arrives to repair it a couple days later, won't it?  
Theo pulls his knitted hat lower and brushes raindrops off his face, only to get a faceful of cold rain a moment later. Large ocean waves attack the deserted shore, rocking his boat and pouring salt water all over the pier.  
The barn can certainly wait.

He is walking back along a narrow dirt road that leads to his home when a dark figure approaches him, so unexpected and quick that he jumps back, nearly falling down the steep side of the cliff. Words get stuck in his throat, and he only manages to think, "Bandits."  
Lightning flashes, momentarily flooding everything with bright electric light, and Theo sees that the stranger has no visible weapon on him.  
"What do you want?" He barks, letting out his anger at being scared half to death. His heart is still beating too fast, blood pounding in his ears. He lifts his oil lamp higher, trying to see the stranger’s face.

The stranger pulls off the hood of his dark brown raincoat, revealing a narrow, tired-looking face. His square-shaped glasses immediately get covered in raindrops.

"Are you a sailor?" He asks. "We need to get to the other shore."  
"In this weather?" Theo laughs, shaking his head. "No way, man. Come tomorrow when storm passed, I'll take you wherever you wish."  
"We don’t have much time, please," the man pleads, “I'll pay,” and names a sum that makes Theo’s mouth gape in surprise.  
After a moment, though, he pulls himself together and, forcing out a laugh, asks, "What, man, did you kill someone?"  
The man takes off his damp glasses, pulls out a checkered grey handkerchief from his raincoat’s pocket and begins to wipe them dry.  
"Quite the contrary," he says and falls silent, without elaborating further.  
Theo thinks a while longer. The man puts his glasses back on, and the rain happily soaks it again. The stranger looks at Theo expectantly.  
"Well, okay, I’ll do it," Theo says at last.  
The stranger hesitates, looking nervous. "I have two more people with me," he says, and, turning his head to the dark forest that grows farther from the cliffside, calls, "Dear, come here."

From behind dark shapes of bushes, another figure emerges and slowly approaches them. It's a woman, just as soaked and exhausted as the man is. Her dark hair is wet, plastered to her forehead like seaweed. In her arms she carries a large bundle of cloth, and when Theo looks closer, he sees a small sleeping child wrapped in a too-big jacket.

Theo looks at the strangers skeptically. He has nothing against women while on the land, but their presence on a boat may mean bad luck, and in a day like this...

"Listen, man," he begins.  
The stranger interrupts him. "I'll double the price," he says hurriedly. There's a note of desperation in his voice. The woman only looks between them silently, biting her trembling lips.  
"Which malboro's tentacle did you step on," Theo mutters.  
The man hears and chuckles mirthlessly. "A big one," he answers. The woman sighs and smiles crookedly, shifting her shoulders a little. Her arms must be aching from holding the child, Theo thinks.  
"Fine," he says. "I’ll maybe regret this, but fine. Let's go."

The sea is just as restless and dangerous as Theo expected, but he manages to get them safely across the strait. Only when his passengers have paid and left, he realizes that he never asked for their names. But money the man gave him is a pleasant weight inside his pocket, and mother-in-law's barn awaits, so Theo throws all the thoughts about the mysterious people out of his head, deciding that it would be better if he simply forgot ever meeting them.

...

A month later a small group of Shin-Ra soldiers comes into the village. Their leader, that looks more like some big-brainer than a military, asks around if villagers encountered any strangers lately, even provides color pictures of the people he’s looking for. The villagers are more curious about the rare pictures than about whoever Shin-Ra is after. Many ask to see the pictures one more time, marveling at the image clarity and bright colors, but nobody recognizes the people in them.

Theo, probably, would look at the photo and remembered his passengers, and then this story would go completely different way, but by then he isn't living in the village anymore. He put the stranger's money to good use, sold his small house and his boat, and moved with his family to Costa del Sol, closer to bigger cities and better possibilities.

After interrogating each and every villager and getting no useful information whatsoever, the man from Shin-Ra leaves the village and his comrades and walks alone to the seashore, stopping at the clifftop where Theo met the strangers. The man scowls at the narrow stone path that leads downwards to the pier, shrugs and comes closer to the edge of the cliff. He is limping, movements stiff and clumsy as if he has suffered some kind of an injury and still has not healed completely.

At the very edge of the cliff the man stops and looks towards the horizon. The waters are calm and peaceful, glistening blue under the clear sky. The man rubs the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger, tilting his glasses upward, as if trying to chase off a headache.

"Where are you hiding, Gast," he mutters. “Where did you take them?”

The sea gives no answer.


	2. Who spilled the milk

Small clouds of dry red dust rose into the hot air with every step. The boy sneezed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand, not caring for any manners. He probably didn't have a handkerchief anyway, judging by his bare feet and simple clothes: a plain brown short-sleeved shirt and blue cotton shorts. His brown-haired head was covered from the midday sun by a large green burdock leaf.  
The boy stopped for a moment, shifting his blue mesh sack from left hand to right, and looked back over his shoulder. A small girl, probably two or three years old, was sleeping soundly, tied to his back with wide and long brown cloth. Her tiny bare feet were dangling in the air, her head hung to the side. The boy himself looked no older than nine, though actually he was even younger; he didn't attend school yet, and in this part of the world children started school at the age of eight.  
The boy sneezed once more, wiped his nose and began to walk again. The path went straight up the hill between two blind wooden fences, so tall that there was no sign of what was behind them except for the very tops of tree crowns.

On the hilltop the dirt path ended at the side of a stone-paved road. The boy stopped at the roadside, looked left and right, deciding where to go. He knew that he would arrive home faster if he went to the right, but this was the time of the day when Fat Lu and his friends were likely hanging out there, and he didn't want to fight them while carrying his sister. The boy sighed, looking to the left, but then scowled, shrugged, muttered a couple of undistinguishable words and turned to the right.

"Heeey, if it's not the Cat!" The boy heard, crossing a road a few streets away from his home. He halted and looked around. The street, as always in such heat, was deserted, with exception of five boys around his age and older who were sprawled in the shade of an old oak tree. One of them pointed a finger at him and said, "Whatcha got, Cat? Something yummy? Care to share with us?"  
The boy who was called “the Cat” turned away from the gang and resumed walking.  
"So rude," one of the boys said. "Cat, haven't your parents taught you to be polite and answer when someone talks to you?"  
Another boy added, "And didn’t they teach you that it's polite to share if you’re asked to, hn, Cat?"  
"His parents likely don't know a thing about manners," an older boy supplied. "After all, they're filthy easterners. Hey, Cat, do they wash themselves weekly, or only if fleas bother them too much?"  
The boy continued on his way, ignoring the insults thrown his way, though his face was flushed red and his greenish-blue eyes with slitted vertical pupils, for which he was mockingly called “the Cat”, were narrowed.  
"Well, if he doesn't know good manners, let's help and teach him!" A tall, beefy boy said standing up from his spot, and quickly ran after the Cat. The others followed him, each bringing either a stick, or a stone.

The Cat seemed to ignore them up until the very moment Fat Lu tried to grab him by the shoulder. In a quick, fluid motion he dodged the bigger boy, dropping his sack to the ground and avoiding the others who tried to attack him. A moment later one of the younger boys found himself standing on all fours with a dusty footprint on the small of his back, and the Cat acquired a weapon - a long sturdy stick. Another boy, who tried to strike Cat's little sister, was tugged forward by his weapon, then received a strong cuff on the nape of his neck and flew tumbling away from the road. The boy who insulted Cat's parents tried to use the height difference and his longer hands to his advantage, but a second later, for some reason, felt a sharp pain in his knee, so strong that he dropped his stick and hopped on one foot, clutching the injured knee in his hands. A moment later, the pain also bloomed in his backside and he fell face first into the red dust on the roadside. The fourth boy ran away and began throwing stones from afar, only to receive one of them back, right to his forehead.  
Seeing all this Fat Lu backed away then turned and ran up the street. The others followed him, some upright, some on all fourth. At the safe distance they stopped and began inspecting their injuries.

The Cat looked around. His burdock-leaf hat was lying on the road, crumpled and dirty. Spilt milk from a broken glass jar was slowly absorbing into the dust. He walked closer and crouched down to examine if other food was alright. It seemed that the second milk jar was undamaged, but vegetables and the paper bag with bread were soaked in milk. By some miracle no one stepped on it. He sighed, wondering if Mom will send him to the Market again.  
The little girl who slept in a sling on his back stirred, and he looked over his shoulder at her.  
"Sephy," she said in sleepy voice, "we home?"  
"No," he answered. "But we'll be there soon. Sleep, Aerith."  
She smiled, yawned and closed her eyes.

The Cat picked up his bag and turned the direction he had been walking before the interruption.  
The boys, apparently deciding that they were safe now, started shouting at him, "Mad Cat! Mad Cat!"

The Cat bent down, searching for a handy stone. The boys shut up and cautiously ran farther away towards one of the fenced yards. Before disappearing behind the fence, Fat Lu stopped and, turning back towards the Cat, put his hands to his mouth like a megaphone and shouted once more, "Mad Cat!"  
The stone landed on the ground right between his feet, raising a cloud of red dust. Fat Lu jumped up surprisingly high into the air, squeaked and hastily ran away.

The remaining part of the walk home was uneventful, and several minutes later the Cat, - or Seph, like his Mom, Dad and sister called him, - entered his house. He stopped just inside, beside the door, put the wet and dirty mesh sack onto the low table and called out, "Mom, I'm home!"

A woman came out of the door to the left and smiled at him. "You're just in time," she said. "The cake is ready. Give me Aerith and go wash up."

He turned his back towards her, and she took the sleepy girl out of the sling, carried her inside the house, and a couple of minutes later returned with a stack of clean clothes. Seph took the clothes, a towel and a pair of slippers and went to a bathhouse that stood in the far corner of the garden. He filled the basin with rainwater from a large barrel and washed himself in water warmed by the summer sun. When all the dust was washed away, he dried himself and, putting on clean clothes and slippers, returned to the house.

He went into the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of soup, but before he could sit at the table, Mom came in and said, "Let's make the shot first."  
Seph pouted, looking into his bowl. "I hate injections!"  
"I know, honey, I know." Mom sighed. "But you know your body cannot live normally without them."  
While she was preparing items needed for an injection, Seph continued to pout. She returned to him, took his right arm and swabbed a small area on his shoulder with a sharp-smelling disinfectant.  
"Why can't I be normal like other boys?" He asked.  
Mom stopped for a moment, then sighed and patted him on the head. "You are normal," she said, smiling at him. "You are special, but that doesn't make you any less normal."  
"Why then do I have to dye my hair? No one else does that." He winced as the needle pierced his skin, and then continued, "and my eyes… they’re just awful."  
"Your hair is very... unusual color for a child," Mom explained, like she did numerous times before. "It's not bad, but it can attract wrong kind of attention, and we don't want that." She cupped the side of his head in her palm and kissed the top of his head. "And your eyes... They are unique. No one else has eyes like yours."  
Seph leaned into her hand and whispered, "I just want to be normal, like Aerith."

For some reason, that made Mom softly chuckle. She shook her head, kissed him again, and with a short, “Now eat up, kid, you’re all bones,” left the kitchen.

After the dinner, Seph settled on the couch in the common room, but Mom soon asked him to move outside, into the garden. "We are expecting a couple of Dad's colleagues," she explained.  
"Why can't I stay?" The boy protested. "I'll be silent, I promise!"  
"I'm sorry," Mom said, smiling apologetically, "but you know that adult's talks are not for children's ears."  
He sighed.  
"By the way, what happened to the milk jar?" She asked.  
"I... Uh... I dropped the sack and it shattered."  
She looked at him quizzically. "Oh, did you, really?"  
"Yeah," he said, and hastily added, "I can go buy another, if you want."  
"No," she said. "It’s too late already; the Market will be closed before you get there. And besides, I need you to look after your sister while I'm at the meeting."

Seph spent the rest of the day in the garden, reading, hidden from the sun under the shade of trees, while his small sister played with her toys in the sandbox. The grown-ups were discussing something inside the house, but, no matter how he strained his ears, he couldn't hear their words clear enough.

Later, when the sun set and both children were sent to bed, the adults became less cautious. Seph quietly climbed out of his bed, tiptoed to the narrow wooden stairwell that led from his room in the attic down to the common room, and sat down on the lowest step, pressing his ear to the closed door.  
"...is not enough," Dad was saying. "We have to ensure they can't..."  
"This is better than nothing," one of the guests said. "Stopping even for a while..."  
"You don't understand. If it remains in working order, Shin-Ra can start it again anytime..."  
"Gast, please, speak quieter," Mom interrupted. "The kids are asleep."  
The voices became much softer. Seph pressed his ear closer, but couldn't hear anything except for single words. Reactors and Shin-Ra. He wondered what was all that about. He heard the name of the Shin-Ra Company, of course, but didn't know much about it. Could it be that his Dad wasn't just a simple school teacher? Was he doing something for the Emperor? Was he some kind of a spy?

Quiet voices slowly lulled Seph to sleep. A while later Mom came to check on him and found him sleeping curled in a ball on the steps near the door. Smiling, she picked him up and carried him to the bed.


	3. The worst and best day

The next morning brought the same heat as the day before it. June was exceptionally dry that year; the sky stayed clear for weeks, not a drop of rain wetted the parched ground. Woken up later than usual, Seph quietly went down to the common room, in hopes that the adults forgot some of the papers on the table, as it had happened once before. He still regretted not keeping to himself two thin paper sheets he had found then. The words on them had all been big and weird and he’d just only learned to read then and couldn’t understand anything at all… But if he had kept the sheets, he supposed that in time he would understand more. Today, though, there wasn't such luck, and Seph, disappointed, went to the kitchen. Dad already left for his work - his ordinary work as a science teacher at the local school, and Mom was out in the garden, weeding vegetable beds together with Aerith.

After the breakfast Seph took the mesh sack, preparing to go to the Market. Aerith, of course, wanted to tag along.  
"Stay home," he told her firmly. "The road is long, you get tired quickly, and you're too heavy to carry you all the way back home."  
"I go myself!" She said. "No crying! Promise!"  
He looked at Mom pleadingly. She smiled at him and said to Aerith, "Let's go see how our melons are doing."  
Aerith, who liked melons almost as much as walking around the town with her brother, looked at Seph, then at the melon beds, and, unable to choose between them, sat down on the grass and burst into tears. Mom took the girl in her arms and mouthed to Seph, "Go!"

Without the little girl to slow him down, Seph quickly reached the Market and bought milk, and fresh bread, and spices, and rice, and everything else he was supposed to buy. As always, after that he didn't go back home immediately, but wandered around for some time, listening to rumors and looking out for unfamiliar strangers. Grown-ups, as always, paid little attention to just another barefoot brat. In half an hour, Seph overheard that, first, Shin-Ra had begun biulding a really huge cannon somewhere on the coast of their continent, and, second, Emperor Kisaragi had sent some more troops to the southeastern shore because of new attacks on villages there.

One of the gossipers claimed he saw with his own eyes that Imperial forces were accompanied by large cat-like monsters. Or maybe dog-like. Or, probably, bull-like. Others laughed at his uncertainty, and the main tried to defend himself by saying that it was too foggy to see clearly. At that, the others laughed even louder and suggested that the fog was caused by too much booze.

Seph wandered around the Market a bit longer, but didn't hear anything new and headed back home. On the way he picked up a stick and started knocking off prickly burdock flowers from the burdock bushes that grew along the dirt road, imagining that he was a lone warrior fighting against a whole army of Shin-Ra soldiers. Evil soldiers' prickly heads easily parted with stems and fell to the ground. In the end only the biggest burdock stayed intact (Seph imagined it was Shin-Ra main base), but under it a large black dog was sleeping, so he decided to let the rest of the burdock army live for one more day.

This time he turned left on the stone-paved road and went down the longer path that was winding around the side of the hill down to its foot, where lived kids he knew and often played with.

He heard them from afar, or, more precisely, he heard Grandpa Sheng shouting, "Get out of my garden, you vermin!" and children's laughter.

Seph found his friends in their favorite hiding place inside an old wheelless carriage that was rotting in a narrow blind alley between two fences. Slava and Mei were sitting on the floor, still laughing, and Katy was fanning herself with both her hands, lying sprawled on the lopsided bench that still carried pitiful remains of golden-red brocade upholstery, faded and threadbare.

Seeing Seph, the friends immediately invited him into their game. They played spies from Imperial Special Forces and were trying to infiltrate Shin-Ra military base. In the absence of a real base its role was played by Grandpa Sheng's garden, and his pears were acting as substitutes for secret files. Seph briefly thought about going home first, but that meant that Mom would, most likely, ask him to look after Aerith, and playing spies then would be simply impossible. So he hid the sack in the carriage, covering it with an old dusty rug so no one would find it, and went with his friends. "I'll only play a raid or two, and then go home," he promised himself.

"Get out of my garden!" Grandpa Sheng shouted, while four kids hastily ran out of his garden, laughing and carrying their spoils, - small green pears, hard as wood. "Let the pears ripen, you idiots! You can't eat them anyway!"

He wasn't wrong; the fruits were absolutely inedible.

After several raids, Sheng gave up and went inside the house, and the game has lost its appeal. The kids lounged in the carriage for a while, and then went to the beach. They spent time swimming and playing sharks, built a large sand castle and watched waves destroying it, and after that they were simply lying under the sun making up stories about pirates, adventures, and space travels. Only when the sun descended below the Wailing Cliff's top, Seph remembered his sack of groceries and Mom who was waiting for him to come home. He sprang up from the sand and began running back to the carriage, shouting "Gotta go home, bye!" over his shoulder.

At the crossroad near Fat Lu's house Seph slowed his pace and walked cautiously, looking around for any sign of trouble, - he didn't believe Lu would let his yesterday's shame to go unavenged, - but all was quiet. Seph breathed with relief, and ran for his home.

The ambush awaited him on the narrow path that led from Underhill to the Rocky Edge. Just as Seph left the wider main road and went past the first two houses, he was stopped by a voice that uttered lazily, "Well, well, look who's hopping. Dima, do you know this flea?"  
Seph quickly glanced around. Fat Lu himself went out of his hiding behind a thick tree trunk, accompanied by his brother who was older by three or four years. Two more boys around the same age went out of a small blind alley and stopped in the middle of the path, preventing Seph from running back towards the road. On both sides of the path the wooden fences stood higher than human's height. Seph was essentially trapped.

Dima, one of the boys behind him, said, "I heard he doesn't like to share, right, Lu?"  
Seph carefully put the grocery sack down on the dusty grass.  
"Yeah," Lu answered. "And hops so fast it's hard to catch him."  
Seph crossed his arms and glared. "I thought it was you, Lu, and your sorry excuses for friends who hopped away with their asses kicked," he said mockingly.  
All four enemies laughed.  
"No, what an attitude!" Lu's brother said. "You think we'd believe you can beat someone, little boy?"  
"We're students of Ivan himself," said the fourth boy, who was silent until then. "So you have no chance against us. You better give us money, and we'll let you go."  
At that, Fat Lu protested, "We agreed to teach him a lesson, or he'll grow bold again!"  
"I didn't agree to beat up a child," the unnamed boy argued. “He’s not even a school age yet!”  
"Okay," Dima said. "Just don't get in our way."  
"And don't rat us out," added Lu's brother.

While the boys were arguing, Seph managed to almost sneak past Fat Lu. Almost.

"Where are you going?" The big brother asked, stepping closer to the left fence and cutting off Seph's escape route.  
"Look out, he's quick," Lu cautioned.  
Seph cast a brief glance back. One of the boys was walking towards him, and the second one stayed in place, even turned away from the others.  
Using Seph’s momentary distraction, Lu's brother lunged forward in attempt to seize him. Seph easily dodged, ducking and jumping to the side.  
"A flea, naturally," Dima laughed, grabbing him by collar of his shirt. Seph twisted out of his grip, leaving a piece of cloth in his hand, and with full force kicked the bigger boy in the kneecap. Dima howled in pain.  
"Ah you...!" Lu's brother exclaimed, swinging his fist at Seph's head. Seph managed to dodge it, but the next blow caught him in the shoulder, and the force of it sent him staggering towards the fence. He leaned onto the wooden boards and shook his head, trying to clear it. Dima was whimpering somewhere to the left, "Daaamn, my knee..."  
Lu and his brother walked up to Seph. "Well," the bigger brother said, pointing at Seph's legs. "Which one?"  
Seph glanced around. If he managed to get past the two, he would be free. If only his head wasn't spinning and his legs weren't so weak... He knew the reason for this sudden exhaustion. He missed the shot, and now his body was weakening, unable to act at full capacity. He hoped that his remaining strength would be enough to break away, or else he risked being badly beaten.  
Lu laughed at him. "What, Cat, not so mad anymore?"

In that moment Seph sprung forward, pushing Lu hard and breaking free of the trap, and ran as fast as he could. Freedom and safety were so close… But after just a few moments, he felt his legs give way.

"No," he whispered, "no, not now!"

He stumbled and fell face first onto the dusty road. Hearing the footsteps approaching, he tried to get up, but was immediately shoved back into the dust.  
"For trying to run, you'll get more," Lu's smug voice warned.  
Seph knew that after a few minutes of rest he would regain some strength, but he didn't know if there was any time left. He closed his eyes and braced himself for a blow that, for some reason, still hadn’t come.

"Stop!" An unfamiliar adult voice said. Seph heard some shuffling and more footsteps, and then someone's hands lifted him to his feet. "You're alright? Look at me."  
Seph wiped the dust off his face and opened his eyes. The man that was holding him up asked, "You're Nyx's child, right?"  
"Yes," Seph said.  
"What happened here?"  
Seph looked around. Lu and his brother were standing beside Dima, who was still sitting on the roadside, rubbing his knee and grimacing. All three were looking at the man. The fourth boy was nowhere to be seen.  
"I tripped and fell," Seph said quietly.  
The man nodded, but didn’t seem to be convinced. "And these troublemakers, of course, had nothing to do with your... misfortune."  
Seph didn't answer.  
"Lu, Kiril, Dima, wait for me here," the man ordered loudly. "I'll talk to you later. And you," he said to Seph, "I'll walk you home."  
"I'm not little," Seph protested. "I can go by myself."  
The man didn't bother answering that, instead letting Seph go and rising up. The boy immediately turned the direction of his home, but the man asked, "Didn't you forget something?"  
And of course, the sack he failed to bring home in time was still lying on the dusty grass beside the road. Seph went to pick it up, still unsteady on his legs. When he crouched before it, feeling light-headed and trying to not plant himself facedown into the dirt again, Lu hissed to him, "Don't think we'll let this go!"

The man waited for Seph to pick the sack up, and then turned the direction of Seph’s home and began walking quickly. The boy tried to keep up, but soon fell back, still tired from the fight and unsteady on his feet. After a few minutes the man glanced over his shoulder and stopped, waiting for Seph to catch up. When the boy caught up with him, he gestured at a pile of logs under one of the fences.

“Let’s sit for a while,” he said.

Seph only nodded, trying to catch a breath, and plopped down on the nearest log.

"Your name is Joseph, correct?" The man asked after a minute.  
"Seph," the boy answered. His full name always bothered him; it sounded wrong somehow, and he preferred the short version.  
"So, Seph," the man continued with the questioning, "tell me, please, what exactly happened."  
"I tripped and fell," the boy said stubbornly.  
The man sighed. "I saw how you pushed Lu and ran," he said. "Was Dima's injury also your doing?"  
"Yes." Seph said quietly to his dirty hands, not daring to look up.  
The man hummed. "Thought so. Now tell me, please, if there was any reason for them to attack you."  
Seph looked away. "I fought with Lu and his friends yesterday," he confessed. "And I won. They ran away."  
"Is that so," the man muttered and fell silent.  
For a few minutes they sat in silence. The sun hid behind the western fence, and the narrow pass was quickly becoming dark.

“Well,” the man said, “let’s not make your parents worry even more than they already do.” He got up and offered a hand to Seph; the boy glanced at his palms and got up on his own, too ashamed of the dirt on his hands. They began walking again.

"Will you," the boy began at last, when they were almost at his house, "kick us out of the village now?"  
The man looked at him, his eyebrows raised. "Why would we kick you out?"  
"Because I... I fought with natives."  
"And why on Gaia would anyone punish you for defending yourself?"  
Seph didn't know what to say to that. He wasn't entirely sure how he got the idea.

‘But, don’t you hate easterners?” He finally asked. “Easterners created Shin-Ra, and they’re building a huge cannon, and maybe want to start a war soon!”

The man sighed. “Many people have created Shin-Ra,” he said, “and many work for it. Some of them easterners, some from other parts of the world. You aren’t good or bad based on where you were born or who your parents are. It’s your choices that matter.”

Seph didn’t find anything to answer that with, so he fell silent again. The man also didn’t speak. After a few minutes, when the narrow road grew nearly completely dark, they finally reached Seph's house and stopped at the gate.

"I can go through the garden by myself," the boy said quickly. The man smiled.  
"Well, I may need to talk to your parents," he said, and, seeing that Seph flinched, added, "Of course, if you wish to train at my school."  
"Your… school?"  
The man uttered a laugh. "Seph," he said. "I apologize. I thought you recognized me. Ivan Simonov."  
"Ivan... But..." Seph looked at him in disbelief. "But you teach only natives!"  
The man shrugged. "We used to train those who were talented no matter their race and nationality. I think now is a good time to restore the tradition."  
"Will... Will you tell my parents about Lu?"  
"I'd prefer to," Ivan said. "What Lu and his friends did was wrong, and we should stop them before they hurt someone, or worse. But first I want to talk to them myself. The older ones are my students; hopefully my influence will be enough."  
"So you won't tell my parents?"  
"Don't you want me to?"  
"No, please don't. If they knew, they'd never let me out of house anymore."  
Ivan looked at the boy and sighed. "As you wish."

Seph pushed open the gate and faced his Mom who was quickly walking towards him from inside the garden. Aerith was sitting on her hip, holding firmly onto her flowery dress. The little girl saw Seph and cried cheerfully, "Sephy came!"  
Mom stopped and looked, frowning, at Ivan and her son. "What happened?" She asked. "Seph, where have you been?"  
"Mom, I'm fine!" He said. "I met with Slava and Mei and Kate, we went to the beach, and I kind of… uh, forgot to go home."  
She looked at Ivan questioningly.  
"I met him on the way and walked him home," he said. "Wanted to talk to Gast, too. Is he home yet?"  
"No, he’ll return only by midnight," she answered. "A lot of work, you know."  
The man chuckled. "With his kind of work, I'm not surprised."  
Mom turned to Seph. "Go home. Clean clothes are by the door, wash yourself and go eat something."  
Seph went, glancing back after every few steps. Mom was talking to Ivan. He wondered if the man told her about Lu after all. And then the thought almost made him trip. "What if Ivan, too, knows about the Shin-Ra stuff?"  
He decided to ask him later. If Mom and Dad let him train in Ivan's martial arts school, that is.

To his surprise, Mom didn't even scold him for disappearing for the most part of the day. She just smiled and told him that she used to return home late too. "Just try to stay out of trouble," she said. "And please, bring milk home sooner. The one you brought today turned sour while you were playing."

Dad returned far earlier than midnight; Aerith was already sleeping, but Seph was still watching Shin-Ra TV. There was a documentary about the space program on the Entertainment channel, and Seph watched it, dreaming of going to space someday, after Shin-Ra stopped being dumb and made peace with Wutai. Dad went into the common room without changing out of his work clothes, and sat down beside Seph. He smelled of antiseptics, chlorine and a little of Mako, a smell Seph knew just a little better than he'd ever wanted to. Dad's face was tired, but he smiled at his son and said, "Good news, Seph. Tomorrow we will try pills instead of injections."

"You made pills for me?" Seph asked.  
"Yes. Invented, and tested, and it even seems to work."  
Seph bounced on the couch. "Cool! Let's try now!"  
Dad laughed. "Tomorrow. It’s too late now to start."  
"O-okay, I'll go to bed then! Goodnight!" Seph jumped off the couch and ran to the bathroom, impatient for the next day to arrive.

When he was walking through the common room on the way to the attic, the TV was still on. Seph hesitated.  
"...enters its final stages and will be ready for a real battle application by the end of this year," the man on the screen was saying. His clothes seemed strangely mismatched: a white lab coat over a bright yellow shirt. The text at the bottom of the screen stated that this was "Professor N. Hollander, Head of Science Dept."  
Seph waited for the man to continue, but he began to rattle something boring about finances and buildings, and the boy went up the stairs. His Dad stayed in the room, listening intently to the scientist's words.


	4. Kissed by the Goddess

Seph woke up before sunrise. Quietly he walked down the stairs and peeked into the parents’ bedroom; both were still sleeping. He paused before their door, thinking about going back to bed, but the thoughts of finally having only to take pills instead of shots made him too restless; he wanted to laugh, and shout, and jump…  There was little to no hope he was able to fall asleep again.

He went back to his room anyway and sat on the bed for a while, imagining how great his life would soon be and grinning to himself. He lay down and closed his eyes, but they refused to stay closed. After a few minutes of turning this way and that, trying to find a comfortable pose, Seph gave up. He jumped off the bed, took the book he was currently reading, - a collection of fairy tales, Dad’s favorite, - and climbed out of the window onto the narrow, tiled porch canopy underneath.

The garden was still hidden in deep shadows where night birds were sleepily finishing their songs and the morning ones only just starting, but the eastern horizon was already brightening. Seph shivered in the chilly morning air, but refused the thought of going back for a blanket, deciding instead on building up his will to withstand hardships, - because he was about to start training at Ivan’s school and become a real warrior, and real warriors aren’t afraid of a little cold air. He settled down with his back against the cool dry wood of a house wall, opened the book and started looking through the pictures. It was still too dark to read.

The wall under his back slowly warmed up. The book seemed to grow heavier and heavier. Seph put it down, only for a second, and shut his eyes, - just to give them some rest.

“Dad invented pills, just for me,” he muttered, and grinned at the thought, “My Dad is the best Dad ever.”

The bird songs seemed to grow quieter and quieter; in the darkness behind closed eyelids, stars and spaceships floated before his eyes. Stiltzkin , a brave Moogle space traveler, was asking him to join the expedition to a legendary planet Terra, now that Seph didn’t need any injections anymore…

“Seph! Where are you?”

The boy jumped up, startled. The book slipped out of his hand and slid down the roof tiles. He tried chasing it, but before he could catch up, it fell down and landed with a thump on the stone-paved path below.

“Seph? Oh.”

Mom stepped out from under the canopy, picked the book up and, shading her yes from the bright morning sun with her hand, looked up at him. Seph felt his face heating up.

“Here you are,” she said. “Come down, breakfast is ready.”

“Breakfast?” Seph looked around. The sun was already up, peeking through the tree branches at the far edge of the garden. “I overslept! Bloatfloat! Mom, is Dad still home?”

“Yes,” she said, squinting at him, “he’s waiting for you. Seph-“

But he didn’t listen. In a second, he was up and back through the window. Picking up some random clothes, he sprang out of the room and down the stairs, pulling on his shirt quickly as he ran.

Dad, thankfully, was in the living room, watching TV while also trying to feed Aerith. The girl didn’t seem to be in the mood for breakfast; she was making faces at the gruel-filled spoon, refusing to open her mouth.

“Aerith,” Dad said, looking away from the screen and sighing, “You have to eat, or you won’t grow up big and healthy.”

“Not wanna grow up!” The girl whined and shut her mouth again, glaring at the spoon as if it was her mortal enemy.

“Dad!” Seph exclaimed, hopping on one foot and trying to fit the other foot into the leg of the shorts. “I’m here! I’m ready!”

“I see.” Dad chuckled, and, making use of the distraction, quickly put the gruel into Aerith’s open mouth. The girl, who was staring wide-eyed at Seph’s attempts at super-fast dressing, didn’t object and swallowed the food.

“Go wash up and get something to eat,” Dad instructed, “we leave soon.”

“Um.” Seph paused mid-buttoning up and glanced at his father. “Where to?”

“My lab. We need to do some tests before and after you take the pills.”

“Aren’t you working today?”

“I do,” Dad said, shoving another portion of food into Aerith’s mouth. “But I have no lectures for a few days, so I’ll have time to monitor your reaction to the new treatment.”

“Oh. Okay,” Seph said.

Dad opened his mouth to add something else, but in that moment Aerith finally noticed his attempts to feed her, and promptly spit out the food. It landed somewhere on the floor, and the girl bowed down to look at it with an expression of disgust on her face.

“Oh, Aerith,” Dad sighed. “Why don’t you want to eat?”

“Give her the spoon and leave her alone,” a voice came from the back entrance, and Mom walked in carrying a bunch of fresh greens from the garden and a small bowl of berries. “She’s perfectly capable of feeding herself.”

“But she doesn’t eat even when I try to spoon-feed her!” Dad complained.

Mom rolled her eyes. “She just isn’t hungry yet,” she said. “Right?”

“Right!” Aerith beamed at her. “Want dill!”

Mom gave her a sprig of dill, and the girl happily began to chow.

“Well,” Dad said, looking between the daughter and the mother, “I guess we can go then.”

“Yes!” Seph agreed and jogged to the bathroom to wash up.

 

After breakfast, Dad took his bicycle from out of the shed, held it steady while Seph climbed on the rack, and they took off.

The local school stood on a slope of an unnamed mountain just out of the far southern end of the town; old and crumbling, crowned with a skewed hat of a half-eroded stone cliff, the mountain was little more than a rocky hill. The road there was too long to be walked on foot. First, Seph and his dad had had to cross their small village, then they had turned to the short, eastern, route around The Hill until they had reached the Market and a surprisingly wide and well-kept stone road that, starting from the Market, led southwest through the center of the town. After they had passed the town hall and left behind the central, wealthiest, part of the town, the road had become far worse; some of the stones were missing, leaving behind deep holes filled with leaves, twigs, dried manure, candy wrappers, ice cream sticks, and other garbage. At that point Dad had to stop and let Seph hop off. The rest of the way they had to walk with bicycle in tow.

The sun, meanwhile, had climbed higher, and the morning was getting hotter with every minute. The air was becoming heavy; a thin grayish haze covered hills and mountaintops in the distance. A small herd of cows was grazing dusty withering grass at the side of the road, supervised by two boys a little bigger than Seph who were sitting on the ground playing cards. Both only wore shorts; their tank tops were wrapped around their heads like bandanas. On the other side, a little farther from the road and up the mountain slope, in a patchy shadow of stunted trees, a young girl was milking a goat, while two small goatlings were jogging around, loudly demanding to be fed.

The school was an old, but still good building, sitting upon a mountain above the rest of the town in its three-story glory, with its bright red tile roof visible from every end of the town like a lighthouse. The building had once belonged to a very wealthy townsman, before he had moved to the Capital and given the old family mansion as a gift to the town.

Entering the school grounds, Dad turned the direction of the entrance to the main building. They left the bicycle propped up against the front wall, along with a few other bikes and scooters, took off their sandals on a porch, left them on a shoe rack, and went inside the building.

To Seph’s surprise, the school wasn’t empty. Walking along the hall, through half-opened doors he could see people in the classrooms and hear them talking; it seemed like the classes were still going, though the school year had already ended and all children were on a summer vacation.

“Why are these people there?” he whispered to his father. Dad squinted in the direction of the classroom in question.

“It’s summer school for adults,” he explained quietly. “Not everyone learns to read in childhood, Seph. Some people cannot afford school because they have to work or to care for their family, or because they live in small villages with no schools at all. This is for them.”

“Oh,” Seph said. “I thought everyone could read. Well, except babies like Aerith.”

Dad smiled and ruffled Seph’s hair. “No, unfortunately not, but we’re trying to fix that. See, the school works all summer, in two shifts because some people can only be here late in night-“

“That’s why you come home so late?” Seph asked, a little disappointed, - that meant that his father wasn’t a spy, after all. “That’s what you’re doing?”

“Mostly, yes,” Dad answered absently, peeking into an empty room beside the stairwell that led to the second floor.

“Hm,” Seph hummed, and decided to try his luck. “And… what else?”

 “This and that,” Dad said. “Let’s hurry, we have a lot to do today.”

They went up the old worn wooden stair with steps polished by countless feet so the edges were soft and curved, and the dark wood was glistening in the morning light coming from narrow windows. On the second floor Dad led Seph through a long corridor and into a small square room. Its walls were lined with old wooden bookshelves, on top of which stood countless flower pots, and long vines with bright flowers were hanging down from them, creating an illusion of being in a jungle. Seph looked around and clasped his father’s hand tightly, just in case.

In the far corner of the room, under a climbing plant with long, dark green vines and waxy shining leaves that took over nearly half the room’s ceiling, stood a large table covered in stacks of papers and books. A top of a grey-haired head was peeking out from behind one of the lower piles in the middle of the table. Apparently hearing their approach, the hidden person moved to the side and looked at them between two stacks of books, revealing a round wrinkled face with bright brown eyes.

“Good morning, Tamara,” Dad said, and the woman beamed at him.

“George!” she exclaimed, standing up so fast that one of the paper towers nearly came down, if not for her quick reaction. “I didn’t expect you until midday!”

Seph frowned a little. He knew, of course, that only a handful of people called his parents Gast and Ifalna, and that their real, official names were George and Irina, but certainly Dad’s coworkers would know that he, just like Seph, disliked his real name, preferring to be called by a nickname?

Dad, however, didn’t seem to be upset by the usage of his real name.

“Well,” he said to the woman, smiling, “I’ve decided to start early. More free time later, right?”

Tamara laughed. “I see you brought help?” she pointed at the boy. “With him, I bet you’ll be done in no time.”

“Ah, yes,” Dad said. “Seph, this is Tamara Jiang, this school’s principal.”

 “Uh, hello,” Seph said, trying to remember some good manners. “Nice to meet you.”

“That’s actually the other reason I came early,” Dad confessed. “I wanted to catch you before you left.”

Tamara smiled and shrugged. “Well, then you’re lucky, George. I was about to leave already. What did you want to talk about?”

“My son,” Dad said, and the boy tensed up. “He’s only seven, I know, but he already reads and knows basic math, so I’d like to ask you to allow him start-“

“Hmm,” Tamara interrupted. “He reads, you say? Seph, please, come here and read this.” She picked up a folded newspaper from the top of one stack and held it up, pointing at the topmost line.

“Central Wutai News,” Seph read aloud.

 “Hm,” Tamara said, “did you really read it, or just knew the name already? Read this one, please,” and she pointed another line below, in a smaller print.

“Preparation for celebration of Motherland’s Day,” Seph read obediently. “Hundreds of guests from all over the world are gathering in beautiful Da Chao de Jia in anticipation of the anniversary of Day of Ascent when the God of the Sea pulled our land from ocean floor and set it above the tides…”

“Enough, enough,” Tamara said, nodding. “Well done, Seph. George,” she added, turning to Gast, “he’s admitted to school. I’ll do the paperwork when I come back.”

“Thank you, Tamara,” he said. “See you later.”

“Goodbye,” said Seph, a little light-headed.

They left the room, walking back to the stairs. Half way there, Seph stopped in his tracks.

“Wait,” he said, “I start the school this September? I get to go to school together with Mei and Slava?”

Dad nodded, smiling at him.

“Oh.” Seph gasped. “I… I’m… That’s so great, Dad! Ah, oh, I forgot-”

He pulled his hand out of Dad’s hold and hurried back to the principal’s room. Tamara was again hiding behind the piles of papers; Seph ran straight up to her table, stopping in front of it.

“I, um,” he mumbled. When Tamara looked up with an amused expression, he gathered his wits and said, clearly and solemnly, “Thank you so much for letting me start school early!” And with that, bowed to the principal.

Tamara’s eyebrows climbed up towards her hairline. With a small smile that made deep crinkles at the corners of her brown eyes, she stood up and, equally solemn, told him, “It is a pleasure to have you as one of our students, Joseph.”

Even the usage of his hated real name didn’t diminish Seph’s joy. He beamed at Tamara, and, after giving her another quick goodbye, turned on his heel and jogged back to his father who was waiting beside the door.

“Now, let’s go to the lab,” Dad said, smiling at him.

They walked down to the ground floor again, turned left at the bottom of the stairs and followed a short wide corridor that led them into the building’s one-story western wing that only had one classroom. A simple wooden plate on its door said “Science Laboratory”.

Inside the laboratory was divided into two parts by a thin plywood partition that didn’t reach the ceiling. The bigger part was a classroom with tables (and overturned chairs on top of them), a blackboard, and numerous bookshelves with stacks of exercise books. Its walls were light-brown from the ground to about one third of height. The upper part was painted white, although the white was nearly invisible under maps, charts and schemes of all kinds. The smaller room had only one tiny window in the corner closest to the door; the whole space was lined with so many shelves that only very narrow passages were left between them. Top and middle shelves were full of books, atlases, folded maps and schematics, and specimens in glass jars. On the lower shelves stood boxes of magnifying glasses, magnets, small glowing multi-colored crystals, and various contraptions for experiments in physics and chemistry.

For Seph, this back room of his father’s workplace was a treasury. On a few very rare occasions when Dad took him to work, the boy absolutely loved spending hours upon hours quietly, like a mouse, exploring its mysteries, trying to guess the function of this or that weird mechanism, or leafing through heavy dusty tomes where words were long and obscure, and pictures were wonderfully detailed and had annotations written in unknown languages.

That day, however, Dad asked him to sit and wait in the classroom and went into the back room alone. Seph strained his ears, trying to overhear what Dad was doing, but only heard footsteps, a weird clanking sound, some more quiet footsteps, and then nothing at all.

Seph waited another few minutes. Nothing happened. He hopped off the stool, tiptoed to the back room door, opened it a fraction and peeked inside.

The back room was quiet. Dust motes danced in a sunbeam from the only tiny window. Flies buzzed lazily, sleepy from the heat. Seph cautiously sneaked farther into the room, looking into every opening between the shelves, but finding no one there. Reaching the last row, he heard another weird clanking sound coming from behind it. Warily he peeked behind the shelf, just in time to see the black cast iron coal stove that stood in the farthest corner of the room begin to shift from its place. Seph looked with his mouth agape as it moved completely aside, revealing a dark hole in the floor. A moment later he heard footsteps and his father’s voice muttering something, and understood that he was about to be caught. Quickly and silently he backtracked to the classroom and plopped down on the stool, staring at the book he was supposed to read and trying to arrange his face into an appropriately focused expression. Inside he was jumping in delight; his father _wasn’t_ just a teacher, after all! Why else would he have a secret door under the stove in his lab?

Dad emerged from the back room only a few seconds later, carrying a wooden box with a red cross on it. He set the box onto the table, opened it and pulled out a test tube, a small vial filled with opalescent green liquid, a blood lancet in a paper wrap, and a bright yellow sphere that lighted up at his touch like a tiny moon.

“Um, Dad,” Seph said, side-eyeing the test tube, “do we really have to do a blood test?”

Dad raised an eyebrow at him. “Yes,” he said, “I’m fairly certain it’s necessary.”

“I don’t like it,” the boy informed, crossing his arms and scowling.

“I’m aware,” Dad said, opening a bottle of clear liquid. A sharp smell of antiseptic immediately filled the room. “Hopefully, we will only have to do this twice. Now, please, give me your hand.”

Sighing heavily, Seph complied. A couple of blood tests in exchange for a life without any more shots? He was more than ready to endure.

Collecting several drops of blood into the test tube, Dad put it into a holder and added a drop of liquid from the vial. The drop didn’t immediately fall all the way down. Instead it was slowly descending for a few moments, as if unwilling to get anywhere near the blood. Although that wasn’t the first time Seph saw the process of testing, he silently rooted for the green drop to stop falling, see that it’s better off as far away from the blood as it can get, and jump right out of the tube. But, as always, it didn’t happen. The drop floated lower and lower until it touched the blood, causing a small eruption; the blood started to swish and jump, as if boiling, and became bright purple in color instead of red. Dad kept glancing between the tube and his wristwatch, his lips moving silently.

Soon enough the reaction ended. The blood in the test tube turned back to its original red color, and if not for small smears of purple on the glass above its level, it would have been impossible to say that the reaction had taken place at all.

“Hm,” Dad said. “Good. Now, sit still and let me Scan you.”

He took the yellow sphere (it lighted up again, as if happy to be touched) and focused on the spell. Seph squirmed and giggled. Dad sighed. “Please, son, don’t move.”

“It tickles!” Seph complained.

Dad rolled his eyes. “Scan cannot tickle you,” he explained, “because it’s a spell. It does not interact with your body on a level where you can experience physical-“ he stopped abruptly, nearly dropping the sphere. “Wait, is this the first time you felt something during Scan?”

“Uh… No, but it never used to tickle this much. Is this bad?” Seph asked, suddenly nervous. “Can I still get the pills?”

Dad stood up and paced around the table. Seph followed his motions with increasing worry. After a few loops Dad stopped, put his head in his hands (one still holding the sphere) and gave out a deep sigh.

“Dad?” Seph asked cautiously.

“I…” Dad tried to adjust his glasses, nearly dropped the sphere, looked at it with raised eyebrows, as if forgotten that he was holding it, and put it in his side pocket. “I suppose, we can put you on pills anyway. There should be no big difference, as pills are essentially the same, only are ingested more slowly over longer period of time.”

Seph sighed in relief.

“Well, let’s finish the tests, then,” Dad said, returning to the table. He looked into the box, then around it, then under the table…

“What are you looking for?” Seph asked.

“Um, where is it,” Dad muttered. “Seph, have you noticed where I put the Materia?”

“The yellow ball? It’s in your pocket,” said Seph.

Dad reached into his pocket, pulled the sphere out, looked at it and chuckled, shaking his head. “Eh,” he said, “I guess, Tamara was right. I need a break.”

They started the Scan again, and this time Seph sat as still as he could, though he couldn’t quite keep all the giggles to himself. Dad frowned at the results, making Seph nervous all over again, but confirmed that everything was alright.

Finally Dad pulled a small dark brown glass jar from out of the wooden box. The jar had a white plastic lid with nothing but a single letter “S” and a string of tiny handwritten red numbers on it.

“Here,” he said, “take one. We’ll need to repeat the tests after three hours. Until then, stay here, where I can see you.”

Seph spent the next three hours quite pleasantly, helping his father sort good electric motors from bad by testing if they worked. When that was done, Dad started some paperwork, and Seph settled down with a large worn book by someone called J. Henri. The book had a weird name, “Entomological Tales”.  As far as Seph could say, it contained no fairy tales at all, and he had no idea what “entomological” meant. Instead of moogles and witches, the book told about all kinds of insects, from tiny pollinating _sevenwings_ and their larva form, nasty parasitical _edgeheads,_ to jungle-dwelling, hive-building _kelzmelzers_ with their three sexes and nine adult forms. All stories were accompanied by neat drawings of insects, their body parts and their nests. In some ways, it was even better than Stiltzkin’s adventures; the brave Moogle was traveling through space, but he was a fictional character and it was a fictional space; all those insects were real and lived out in the real world.

Putting the book aside, Seph spent some time daydreaming about expeditions to jungle in search for new species of insects, - surely, not all of them were discovered yet? – until Dad, apparently done with his paperwork, interrupted him.

“How are you feeling?” He asked the boy.

Seph flexed his arms, stood up and walked back and forth a few times, then did several squats.

“I’m fine,” he said finally.

Dad scanned him again with the Materia and seemed to be satisfied with the results. “Good,” he said. “Now, go play outside, but don’t wander too far away. If you feel anything wrong, come back quickly or shout for me.”

Seph did as he was told and went to the garden. For a couple of hours he played an explorer, looking for some of the insects he just read in the book and watching them. Following a bee, he climbed up an old oak tree and nearly bumped his head into a large beehive, barely escaping without disturbing the bees. While up on the tree he discovered a strange-looking, translucent blue cocoon with a half-formed insect inside and took it back with him; he wanted to bring it home and look who would hatch from it.

Soon enough Dad called Seph back into the lab and they had lunch. Afterwards the boy went back outside and played there until the sun began to climb down the sky and Dad said that it was time to go home. Seph had another Scan and one more blood test (which he stoically endured). Dad locked the lab and, taking the bicycle, they started walking back the same road they walked in the morning. The school was left behind, quiet and empty between two shifts; the morning students had already left, and the evening ones hadn’t yet arrived.

On the road back home they stopped by the Market. While Dad was buying milk and fish, Seph took a moment to peek around for foreigners and eavesdrop on conversations.

“They say old Hojo’s son was there,” an old man selling honey and beeswax from a low, slightly slanted wooden stand, was telling a customer, while the boy pretended to be interested in his produce. “You know, the one exiled by the late Emperor.”

“You don’t say!” The customer, a middle-aged woman in a long plush blue robe, with head covered by a bright flower-patterned shawl, exclaimed. “That _svoloch_ in Shin-Ra too?”

Seph stilled, carefully not looking at the grown-ups, and strained his ears. Unfortunately, in his new clean clothes and fancy sandals he wasn’t as invisible to them as in his usual dusty shorts and worn shirt.

“Now, what are you interested in, boy?” The man asked, and Seph was forced to look at him.

“I- this one, please,” he pointed at a random small jar of honey.

“Here,” the man said, passing him the jar. Seph took it, gave him the money and was trying to think of a way to linger around and eavesdrop more, when the woman to whom the street seller had been talking looked at him.

“Oh my,” she gasped, and her face took on a sad, pitiful expression. “Kissed by the Goddess. Bless your heart and your parents, child.”

She made a strange gesture with her left hand, brushing her face with her palm from forehead to chin, and shook her hand to the side, as if shaking off some invisible dirt.

“Um, thanks?” the ever-polite Seph said, frowning in confusion. Both grown-ups were staring at him now, so he admitted defeat and dragged his feet back to Dad.

 

The sun was still high in the sky by the time they had arrived at home, but Seph wasn’t in a mood to go anywhere. He washed dust and sweat off himself, changed into simpler clothes and hid in his room.

The mysterious cocoon brought from the school garden was safely hidden in an empty matchbox on his bookshelf between a glass crystal with a tiny black dragon Bahamut inside, and a cardboard model of a space rocket. Gentle wind flowed from outside through open window and escaped through open door. Out in the backyard, Mom was talking, too quiet for him to hear her words clearly, and Aerith answered in her high-pitched toddler’s voice. Seph was sprawled on his bed with a book, but couldn’t focus on the story. The words of the woman he met at the Market refused to leave his mind; what did she mean? Did it mean anything at all, or was it just another old superstition and he was worrying over nothing at all? He huffed and rolled eyes at himself, but it didn’t help. He put the book down and rolled over, glaring at the ceiling as if it was guilty of putting these thoughts in his mind. The thoughts persisted. Silently berating himself, Seph climbed off the bed.

In the living room, Dad was fast asleep on the couch, while the TV was babbling something quietly. The boy ignored it and went out through the back door. Mom was in the backyard, feeding chicken with Aerith’s help. The girl was sat on the ground, surrounded by young chicks that weren’t afraid of her in the slightest; several tiny fluffy yellow ones were perched on her outstretched legs, picking food out of her dirty palms.

“Mom,” Seph said, approaching them, “what it means – kissed by the Goddess?”

“Kissed by the Goddess?” Mom repeated. “Where did you hear that?”

“On the Market today,” the boy said. “A woman said that to me, and then did like that,” he tried to recreate the strange gesture.

“Oh,” Mom said. “That’s… I haven’t heard that in a while. It’s a very old saying… I’m surprised anyone still remembers it.”

“Yeah, but what does it mean?” Seph asked.

Mom hesitated, glancing momentarily into a bowl of grains she held. “Do you know what 'Mako radiation' means?” She asked finally. Seph nodded. “A very, very long time ago,” Mom continued, “there lived a race called Cetra. They believed that our planet had a conscience of its own, and they called that conscience Gaia. When all living things die, their souls, - their life force, together with their memories, - returns to the Lifestream that flows under the planet’s crust. There, in the very center, inside the planet’s core lives Gaia, the Goddess.”

“Yeah, I know that, you’ve told me before,” Seph said. “But if she lives in the planet’s core, how can she kiss anyone?”

“Oh, she obviously can’t kiss anyone like humans do,” Mom smiled, “but Lifestream, and therefore Mako, is her essence. Kissed by the Goddess means that someone came in contact with Mako and its radiation left its mark on them.”

“So,” Seph said, frowning, “that’s what happened to me, right? Gaia, uh, kissed me, and that’s why I’m like this? Eyes, and hair, and everything?”

“Mmm… More or less, yes,” Mom said elusively.

“But how did it happen?” He asked. “Did I fall into a Mako spring when I was a baby?”

“That… is a story for another time.”

“But Mom!”

Mom only shook her head. “Seph,” she said, “please, it’s a really long story and I’m not sure you’re old enough to understand it wholly. I promise I will tell you, just not right now.”

“O-kay,” Seph deflated, disappointed.

He went back home to his book, but the thoughts of his past never left him. What had happened to him? And why had his mom seemed so distraught and even guilty talking about it?

Something really bad had happened to him, he knew that now. Something that had made his parents move to Wutai, something that still haunted them, and Seph was determined to learn what it was.


	5. Sticks, Stones and Fairy Tales

As Dad had promised, he had spent several days monitoring Seph’s adjustments to the pills. The boy hadn’t complained; spending time in his father’s lab had been even more interesting than usual. Instead of having to sit quietly in the backroom, he had been able to take books and devices into the better-lit classroom and settle comfortably on dad’s chair. When Dad had needed his table back, Seph had moved to the overgrown garden and explored it to his heart’s content, finding such interesting things as bird’s nests, tree hollows, mysterious bones, and even an old rusty chocobo-drawn hay mower with large metal wheels and scary-looking jagged blades.

Unfortunately, too soon Dad had deemed him well enough to be on his own again.

First day without supervision, Seph went to the Market in hopes of overhearing rumors from the honey-selling old man, but the man was nowhere to be found. Disappointed, Seph left the Market and walked all the way to the Underhill to play with his friends, but, to his further disappointment, the old carriage was deserted, as was the beach. He went to Mei’s house, but found only her oldest brother there and learned that she had left with her parents and younger sisters on a journey to the capital for the Motherland’s Day celebration. Kate and Slava had gone with them, so Seph couldn’t even share the news of him starting the school with his friends.

Even Fat Lu’s gang ignored him. While he was walking past them, they glared from their hiding place in the shadow of a large oak tree, whispering among themselves, but didn’t utter a single word to him.

Seph came back home unusually early and spent the rest of the day bored and grumpy. In an attempt to distract him Mom gave him some errands, but washing dishes, sweeping floors, and repairing an old wooden milking bench haven’t improved his mood.

By the sunset he was sulking with a book in front of TV, glaring minutely at Aerith who was lying on the carpeted floor, drawing bright color circles on a large sheet of thick paper and chattering happily. Mom was sat at the table, looking through a stack of papers and making notes in a small leather-bound journal. Seph had tried to subtly peep into it, but had only managed to make out thin pencil lines of some kind of schematics before Mom had noticed and sent him away, which had only added to his grumpiness.

Dad came home with last sunrays. As he walked into the room, Aerith immediately jumped up and ran to him. He took her in his arms, went to Mom and kissed her on the cheek, then came to the couch and sat down with Aerith on his lap.

“How are you feeling?” He asked Seph and ruffled his hair.

“Uh, I’m fine,” the boy said.

Dad eyed him suspiciously. “You seem… upset.”

“Yeah,” Seph said, and hurried to add, “But that’s not because of pills! I swear! Just… My friends went away for the rest of June, and didn’t even tell me!”

“Honey, they probably knew we wouldn’t let you go with them anyway,” Mom said, trying to placate him. Seph huffed angrily.

“They could still have told me!”

“Hm, yes, this is unfortunate,” Dad said. “But, on the other hand, now you can start studying at Ivan’s school with no distractions.”

“Ivan’s… oh!” Seph looked into his father’s smiling eyes. “You’re going to let me study there?”

“Of course we are,” Mom said. “Ivan says you have talent for martial arts.”

“And… when I’m starting?” He asked, climbing off the couch impatiently. “Tomorrow?” He looked between Mom and Dad with pleading eyes.

“Tomorrow,” Dad agreed.

 

The night was cool and dark. Shimmering band of Moon’s Veil shone above, stretched from one side of the horizon to another, its myriad jewels – stars – twinkling in the clear black sky. On the far eastern side the horizon was beginning to glow; dawn wasn’t too far away.

Seph lifted his gaze up and looked at the countless stars. Sighing, he leaned back on his arms, letting his head fall back. A sharp stone was cutting into his backside; he squirmed a little, trying to find a more comfortable position on an uneven hard ground. The hands that were slowly gliding through his hair paused for a moment, and the song a sweet gentle voice was singing subsided. After a moment it started again, slow and soothing. Seph smiled happily.

“Mommy,” he whispered into the darkness. “I love you so much…”

The song stopped altogether.

“Mom?” Seph asked, pulling up and starting to turn around, but as soon as he was able to lay his eyes on the dark shape of a woman sitting behind him, everything disappeared.

Seph woke up with a gasp in the same near-darkness that surrounded him in the dream; only instead of cool and hard stone under him there was a soft mattress, and instead of bright Moon’s Veil his gaze met the ceiling, faintly pale in the dark with the darker square of a lamp shade in the middle. He wriggled out of his tangled sheets, sat up in bed and looked out of the window. The sky was brightening already at the eastern side, but the sun wasn’t up yet. Everything was quiet with exception of birdsongs.

He let himself fall back onto the pillows and closed his eyes, trying to keep the dream a little longer, but it was already slipping away, leaving behind a strange feeling of sadness and longing. His mother was so lonely there, alone in a rocky desert under an endless sky…  He just wanted to go back and hug her, and tell her again that he loved her. He knew of course that his Mom was sleeping downstairs, in her bedroom… But somehow, at the same time she was trapped there in the dream, alone.

Seph turned onto his side and curled into a ball, stubbornly keeping his eyes shut, not letting the tears fall. A few still escaped, wetting the pillow under his cheek. It took a long while before he slowly drifted back to sleep.

He was woken up by Aerith who climbed onto his bed and unceremoniously jumped right on top of him, hugging him around the neck with her tiny cold hands and shouting into his ear, “Wake up Seph! Sun up! Wake up!”

Seph groaned and winced at the sound and then laughed, trying to escape from sister’s grip. They wrestled playfully, giggling, until both fell down to the floor along with the sheets. Seph landed with a thump and an “Ouch!”, still holding his little sister, trying to keep her above himself to shield her from the impact.

He giggled breathlessly while she bounced on his stomach a few times, singing, “My cho-co-bo! I ride cho-co-bo!”

“Alright,” Seph said, trying to squirm out from under her weight. “Aerith, this chocobo can’t run anymore, it’s hungry and wants to eat!”

“Yes!” Aerith jumped off of him and extended her hand to help him get up. “Feed my cho-co-bo!”

They walked down the stairs hand in hand and she guided him to the kitchen. At the threshold Seph stopped abruptly. “Oops,” he said, “I forgot to take the pill. Pour me some milk while I’m getting it.”

He ran back up the stairs to his room, climbed a chair beside his desk and took an opaque white bottle from the top shelf. Opening the lid, he turned the bottle over and let one of the small round translucent green pills fall into his palm. It looked a lot like the drops Dad used to test his blood; not for the first time, Seph wondered if it was the same Mako he was exposed to as a child. But wasn’t additional radiation going to make him even sicker, instead of better?

Seph shrugged and put the pill into his mouth. He was just a child, after all. Dad certainly knew better than him. He put the lid back on, set the bottle back on the shelf, jumped off the chair and ran back to the kitchen where Aerith was already setting his breakfast on the table, - milk, honey, butter and two slices of bread.

 

Ivan’s school started in the afternoon. Despite Seph’s insistence that he was perfectly capable of getting there alone, Dad came home early and went with him.

The school stood at “their” side of the town, on a hill to the north of the beach where Seph liked to play with his friends. It wasn’t as spectacular a building as Dad’s school was; just an old white-and-brown house in traditional Wutai style, with a wide brown tile roof and a wooden terrace. Just like Dad’s school, it was surrounded by a garden, but, unlike that garden, this one was well-groomed, with carefully arranged trees and bushes, and standing stones, and flowers everywhere. On the right side there was a pond with stone banks and clear water, covered in large floating green leaves. Pale flowers of water lily were peeking out from between the leaves, and from time to time a bright orange-white spine of a koi fish breached the open water surface.

As they walked a nice stone-paved path towards the entrance to Ivan’s school, Seph looked around and decided that he liked Dad’s school garden better. This one was pretty like picture on a postcard, but there were no adventures to be had in it, - no secret corners, no trees with holes so large you could hide in them, and certainly no rusty remains of mysterious machines in the back.

Leaving their sandals on a shoe mat on the terrace, they walked to the open door, - and there Seph stopped, looking in amazement at the intricate ornaments adorning the walls on both sides.

“What are these?” He asked his father. Dad frowned at the ornaments and shrugged uncertainly.

“These are symbols of the five Sacred Masters that once trained in this school,” came a voice from inside the school, followed by Ivan himself emerging from the shadows.

“Here in this school,” he said, “we are practicing the ancient art of spirit-cognition, which, simply speaking, means communing with spirits and learning fighting styles from them. Very rarely, those who are extremely talented in this art can learn the spirit’s ways so completely that they are able to assume its very shape and traits.”

“Oh,” Seph said, glancing at the wall again. “So these are your pupils who can do that?”

“They are not _my_ students,” Ivan smiled. “I have yet to find someone capable of full transformation. But this school existed for nearly six hundred years.” He gestured at one of the ornaments that looked vaguely human-shaped, but with a horned head, a tail, and large wings. Underneath it was a row of stylized symbols that read “Demon of the Mountains”. “This is Lermontov, our school’s last Sacred Master and my great-grandfather.”

“So you can’t do that? Change your shape?” Seph asked, and Ivan shook his head.

“No, my own talent lies in summoning weapons and armor.”

“Wow!” The boy looked at Ivan, wide-eyed. “I didn’t even know it’s possible!”

“Everything is possible,” smiled the teacher, “if the Goddess favors you.”

 

After a brief conversation Dad left, and Seph followed Ivan into the building. While Ivan gave him a tour around the school and introduced him to other teachers, students began to arrive. Most of them were far older than Seph; some were probably older than his father. Only a few were of age comparable to his.

The boy was put into a group of several students where he was the shortest and youngest. The very first lesson wasn’t as spectacular as he’s expected; they haven’t summoned any spirits, read any incantations, or even beat anything up. Instead they’d spent time learning to breathe, to stand, and to move properly, and finished it with a meditation. When the class ended, Seph was a little disappointed.

Afterwards, while the older students left, the younger ones gathered on the terrace, sitting on straw mats and chatting. Someone brought a large brass _samovar_ from inside the school and set in on a low wooden table. Two bigger boys brought water, poured in into the _samovar_ , and started a fire; a thin stream of white smoke rose from the _samovar_ , filling the terrace with a sweet fragrance of burning apple wood. Soon the tea was ready. Older children started to give it out to everyone who asked, with an addition of tiny cookies.

Seph sat with the others, staring at the floor and absent-mindedly stroking his forearm. He felt uncomfortably out of place. While some of the kids’ faces were familiar, none of them were his friends. Some were side-eyeing him and whispering among themselves. Most were simply ignoring him.

“What is this on your arm?” someone asked. Seph glanced up. A brown-eyed girl, ten or eleven years old by her looks, in a dark violet sleeveless tunic over a white short-sleeved shirt, was squinting curiously at the spot Seph had been stroking. “Is this a tattoo?”

“Uh, yes,” Seph said, covering it with his palm.

“I didn’t know Midgarians had tattoos,” the girl said, tilting her head to the side. Her short blond hair was sticking out every each way.

Seph glared at her. “I’m not from Midgar,” he said curtly. “I’m from Nilheim, it’s on another continent.”

“Oh,” the girl said, shrinking back and looking embarrassed. Her face reddened. “Eh, I- I’m sorry! Hey, my name is Svetlana.” She extended her hand to him, and Seph took it, shaking it briefly.

“I’m Seph.”

“I know. You’re Teacher Nyx’s son.” The girl beamed at him. “He’s so cool! His classes are the best in the whole school!”

“I- Um- Thank you,” Seph mumbled, feeling his own cheeks heating.

“So-o,” the girl drawled, “is this your clan tattoo? This is mine,” she pointed at a small stylized picture of a swallow tattooed on the inside of her right forearm, just below the elbow.

Seph lifted his palm a little and peeked under it at his own skin. If it was a clan tattoo, it was a pretty sucky one, he thought. Not a picture, not even a pictogram; just a row of blurry dark grey letters and numbers. He read it, moving his thumb along the line. _JS790103._ Dad once said it was made in a hospital where Seph had been as a baby, so small that he didn’t even remember that.

“I’m not sure if it means anything,” he said finally, raising his hand to show the tattoo to Svetlana. “It's from a hospital. A patient number or something.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” The girl’s eyes darted to his face. “Was it because of-“ she gestured at his eyes.

“I think so.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “But you’re okay now, right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He smiled.

“That’s great!” The girl beamed at him. “I bet you’ll do well here, too,” she added seriously.

“Thank you,” Seph said, smiling shyly.

Meanwhile, the students arranged themselves in a wide semi-circle with an empty straw map in the center. Svetlana tugged Seph by his shirt, prompting him to move to the side too. “We’re waiting for Ivan,” she explained quietly. “He tells us tales after the classes.”

And indeed, soon Ivan stepped out of the building and came over to them. He settled down on a straw mat in front of the children and, smiling at them, asked which tale they wanted to hear.

Everyone began to talk over each other, but Ivan held up a hand and said, “One by one, please. If you want to speak, raise your hand.”

Seph looked at children as they raised their hands and voiced their opinion when Ivan called their names. Seph himself was feeling too out of place to even try that.

When there were no more raised hands, Ivan said, “Thank you all. Although I also wanted to hear from our newest student. Seph, what is your opinion?”

“Uh,” he muttered, looking around with wide eyes. “Um,” he added, wringing his hands. Svetlana grinned at him and nodded her head, prompting him to speak. “I… H-how about the Tale of Two Smiths?” He said finally in a thin voice.

“Excellent choice,” Ivan approved. “Well, listen to this story: long, long ago, before any kingdom of men was founded, in the hills east of the Red Mountains lived a blacksmith…”

Sun climbed down, sitting on the top of Red Mountains in the west. Long shadows fell across the garden, and gentle summer wind played with dusty leaves. Seph listened to the tale of Masamune and his most skillful apprentice, and before his mind’s eye the tale was coming to life with clang of metal on metal, and rumble of a thunder, and flash of lightning, and quiet murmur of water in a stream. He could almost feel the rough hilt under his palm, could nearly see the glint of sunrays on steel from the corner of his eye…

Too soon the tale ended. Ivan bade everyone farewell and went back into the school. Svetlana walked with Seph to the exit, but there she said goodbye and turned another way, -- she lived on the opposite side of the Hill.

Seph walked alone through the village. Away from the shade of mountains, the heat was unbearable. Wind died down, and dust floated in the still air like thin brown mist, irritating his nose and throat. The streets were empty save for an occasional dog sleeping in the shadow of a fence, or a flock of chickens bathing in the sand.

He turned down the road to his house, and came nose to nose with a small group of kids whom he recognized from Ivan’s school. One of them, a tall broad-shouldered boy with a faint shadow of newly-growing beard on his cheeks, stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. Seph instinctively shrugged it off and jumped back.

“Huh, twitchy,” the boy said. “Relax, kid, we just want to talk.”

“Can we talk tomorrow at school, please?” Seph asked. “It’s too hot now.”

“Well, you’ll just have to endure, then,” the boy said.

Seph glared at him. Others laughed.

“Listen, kid, I’ll be short,” the boy continued. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll quit Ivan’s school. Just come in tomorrow and tell him that you’ve changed your mind and don’t want to attend anymore.”

“Why would I lie to him? I don’t want to quit,” Seph said in confusion.

“Oh yes,” said a girl in tight leather shorts and a tiny bright yellow top. She tilted her head and batted her long black lashes at him, curling a strand of her dark hair around her forefinger. “It’s always about what you Midgar people want, isn’t it? You come here, steal our Mako, take our land-“

“I’m not from Midgar, I’ve never even been there!” Seph countered. “I don’t want your Mako or your land! I just live here, this is my home too!”

“Yeah, and we don’t want you here in _our_ home,” another boy said. “Go back to Midgar or wherever you’ve come from. Ivan’s school belongs to Wutai people, not you. We won’t let you steal it, too.”

“I’m not stealing anything from you!” Seph shouted, feeling hot tears prickling his eyes. “Learning stuff isn’t stealing! Ivan said it was okay if I came to the school!”

“Calm down, kid,” the first boy said. “Ivan made a mistake. Happens even to the best of us.”

Seph looked between the kids in front of him. Some of them were scowling at him, others just looked bored. He thought about coming to the school tomorrow, and lying to Ivan, and walking back home after that…

Seph planted his feet firmly on the ground and squared his shoulders. “No.”

“What?” The older boy asked, taken aback by his answer.

“No,” he repeated. “I won’t quit.”

“What’s going on?”

Seph whipped around, stepping to the side warily. Another boy was walking towards the group from the direction of the school. Seph vaguely recognized him as the boy who once refused to take part in beating him up.

“Trying to make this one quit Ivan’s school,” the girl said. “But man, is he a stubborn one!”

The new boy looked at Seph. His eyebrows climbed up his forehead, and his lips thinned. Suddenly he burst out laughing.

“Oh,” he moaned between fits of laughter, “really, guys? You really-- ha-ha-- think he’s worth it?”

“What?” The older boy asked, frowning. “You don’t think it’s important to not let this scum-“

“Oh come on!” The newcomer said. “He’s just a small dumb flea from Midgar. Do you really think he can succeed? That he can learn anything at all? Let him try! When he fails, -- and he _will_ fail, trust me, -- everyone will see that foreigners are useless and don’t deserve to be in the school!”

The group looked between each other. No one seemed to know what to do. Finally, the boy who spoke first said, “All right then. Do what you want. Just remember,” he leaned down and looked Seph straight in the eye, “we’re watching you, flea.”

With that he straightened up and walked around Seph, heading back to the center of the village. Others went after him; Seph followed them with his eyes, standing in his place. Before turning around the corner, the boy who had laughed at him and said that he would fail, looked back and winked at him.

Seph was left in the middle of the road, hurt, confused and extremely thirsty.

 

The days flew. June ended. Seph’s friends came back from the capital, bringing color photos and a bunch of fun stories, and were happy to learn that Seph was going to start the school together with them. July rushed by in a haze of brown dust and bluish smoke of forest fires. Seph’s mysterious blue cocoon hatched, letting out a weird fluffy white butterfly with hairy wings and antennae like white yarrow leaves. It bit the boy on the thumb, drawing blood, and, while he was too busy assessing the damage, escaped through an open window.

At the end of July came long and heavy rain. For two weeks Seph was forced to stay home; the dirt roads of the village turned into a mix between a quagmire and a river, nearly impassable.

When the two-week long rainfall finally exhausted itself and died down, everything around was washed clean of dust. New grass had sprouted from the damp soil. Flowers covered the hills and mountain slopes. Forest fires were extinguished by the rain, and the sky was blue and high, speckled with tiny white clouds, and the sun was shining bright and clear.

Classes at the public school started on the first day of September. Seph walked there with his best friends, happy and proud, and sat with them at a table in the front row. The school wasn’t too difficult in those first autumn months; just three classes every day: reading, grammar and basic arithmetic. More subjects were to be added later, in the middle of winter, when school came back from holidays after Miranda’s Mercy.

No one bothered Seph at school, not even Lu. It seemed as if all his enemies decided to not pay him any attention, and while Seph was glad, he couldn’t stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. It always did, in his experience.

Between the public school, Ivan’s school, chores, and homework Seph had little free time. He rarely lingered at the Market anymore and caught almost no rumors; from what he managed to overhear, Shin-Ra was still building its new huge cannon in some small fishing town called Junon, and Emperor’s forces were still gathering at the eastern shore.

 

November brought cool winds from the sea and low grey clouds, but no rain. The weather had been dry since the short two weeks at the end of July, and the grass had become dusty and withering again. Some of the trees lost their leaves and stood naked, their branches stretched like bony limbs towards the sky. Only the garden at Seph’s home was still green and fresh.

In the middle of November Ivan gave Seph’s group their first lesson on spirits.

“We, as all living things on this Planet, are born from the Lifestream,” he began. “That’s where our life force, and our consciousness, comes from. While we live, while our bodies grow, while we accumulate our experience and build our memories, our life force grows too; and when we die, it -- what we call our _spirit_ \-- returns to the Goddess’s lap, together with the memories of lives we lived.

“There in the Lifestream our consciousness begins to dissipate and finally falls apart, mixing in with other consciousnesses and memories of other lives. And when it’s time for a new life to be born, a part of Lifestream goes into it as a new spirit, bringing these fragments, these threads of past memories, with it.

“If we reach into ourselves and find those fragments, we can learn from them. If we meditate on them and our focus is strong enough, we can reach other fragments of the same threads, and learn more. And if our focus and our determination are the strongest, we can remember not only with our brain, but with our body, with our spirit, with our whole being, - and the spirits whose memories we carry will live again through us and give us their strength.

“This is what it means to be a Sacred Master,” Ivan concluded. The students looked at him in awe. Seph shifted nervously, and Ivan smiled at him in encouragement.

“But what if I don’t have any good fragments in me?” The boy asked. “What if I only have, like, memory fragments of grass, or some bugs and birds, and nothing _really_ strong?”

Ivan raised his eyebrows. “That’s a good question, thank you, Seph. We often think only of big animals, or even only of monsters, as something worthy of learning battle skills from. But every living being has its tactics for survival, and some of the tiniest ones are the most skillful. It is very possible to learn a surprisingly lot from the memories left by insects and small animals and birds, Seph. This is your homework: watch and learn for yourself how tiny living things protect themselves from enemies.”

Seph looked at Ivan suspiciously, but he didn’t seem to be joking. “Yes, teacher,” he said, trying to not sound sullen. He wasn’t really convinced by the teacher's words.

When he left the school after a meditation (Seph haven’t been able to see or feel anything; it seemed like there was nothing but darkness inside him, which only strengthened his self-doubt) and was walking past the road that led from the Hill to his house, Lu’s gang spotted him from the distance and ran to him. Seph prepared for a fight, but the boys stopped a short way from him and laughed. One of them shouted, “Hey, Mad Cat! How it feels to be a weakling, eh?”

Another one said, “Yeah, poor Sephy doesn’t have any good spirits in him!”

“Hay warrior!” Lu laughed. “Watch out, or goats will eat you!”

Seph turned his gaze away and marched silently past the boys, blinking away tears. They followed him for some time, throwing more insults his way. Even nearing his house, he still could hear their voices in the distance, laughing and shouting.

He returned to the task given by Ivan only a few days after. To his surprise, tiny insects turned out to be much stronger than he expected; watching them build their homes and defending themselves from other insects, or even from larger animals, he calmed down a little. Even if what he was so afraid of was true and he really didn’t have any fragments of strong spirits in him, the ones he had could probably be enough.

At least, he hoped so.

 

November turned into December. The weather had grown cold; in some of the mountain villages it was even snowing. Where Seph lived, it was too warm for the snow. Instead, winter storms came with strong winds and cold rain. Days were short and dark, and nights were cold and filled with strange, eerie sounds: wind howled outside, trees groaned under its pressure, and the house answered with groans of its own, as if they were complaining to each other.

Before Seph knew it, came Miranda’s Mercy Eve. Both schools went on a week-long holiday until New Year. Seph wandered around the house, bored out of his mind and gloomy as a storm cloud. His friends had gone to travel again, this time to the mainland town of Costa del Sol, and he was again left behind because of his stupid condition. In a fit of irritation he even cursed the Goddess for kissing him (cautiously glancing around to check if she wasn’t about to struck him with lightning or send a swarm of _allemagnes_ after him).

None of the kids from Ivan’s school had tried to confront Seph again. It was probably due to the fact that he still hadn’t shown any progress with the spirits. Some of the students from his group were already able to see short, confusing glimpses of the past memories during meditation, others were getting better at physical combat, but Seph was just mediocre. He tried as hard as he could, but was only exhausting himself, barely able to walk home after the classes, and his exhaustion only grew with the intensity of training. It seemed that he couldn’t grow stronger at all; sometimes it made him think that the boy who had laughed at him, - Kenta, he had learned his name, - had been right and he was truly talentless, despite Ivan’s words.

He had shared his fears with Svetlana, but she’d just shrugged. “All people progress differently,” she had said. “Some start quickly, others need more time. I trained nearly two years before I learned to feel those memories even a little, and I still have a very long road before I start learning from them. Maybe you’re trying too hard, Seph. Just give it time, don’t push yourself so much.”

Her words hadn’t made him feel any better. He wanted to learn something, to become stronger, but more than anything he wanted to prove himself, to prove to the people who doubted him that he wasn’t really useless.


End file.
